There are different countries, with different cultures, so there are different approaches of development that can be adapted to any circumstances. It is key to challenge the idea that there is only one form of development and that all countries must follow the same Western capitalist model that has led to the progressive destruction of the environment, poverty, inequality and violence in our societies.

We urgently need development models that consider equity, sustainability, equality, wellbeing, and rural and indigenous communities. We need to create the space for new thinking around alternative ideas to promote progress that is based on the collective wellbeing of both humans and nature.

Halting and toxifying extractive industries

• • Demanding a moratorium on mega industrial extraction (mining, fossil fuel, forestry, industrial agriculture and fishing). Reduce their social license and right to access natural resources such as water, and halt the displacement of Indigenous communities and the destruction of vital habitats as entry points among others. Both governments and companies should take the responsibility to plan and finance a just transition for the workers and communities affected. The transition strategies must be geographically targeted via investments and social programs with a relatively longer time horizon. New investments - if possible - should be made even before closures happen.

Exploring, experimenting and supporting alternatives to development and extractivism with new economic models that are committed to environmental and social justice by:

• • Challenging the extractive status quo i.e Post-Growth in the North and Post-Extractivism in the South - as economies in the North stop growing or shrink, the demand for raw materials will diminish; in this scenario, the countries of the South should rethink their economies and move away from exports of raw materials and towards models that put community and nature at their core and lay the foundations for new civilisations: moving away from anthropocentrism towards biocentrism and focusing on reproducing life and not capital.

  • Replacing growth with fulfilled needs and equal distribution, ensuring people’s quality of life, in a broad sense that goes beyond material wellbeing (to include spiritual wellbeing) and the individual (to include a sense of community), as well as beyond anthropocentrism (to include Nature).

  • Recognising the values inherent in nature both at the local and the global level and seeking people centric activities in harmony with nature, respecting the interconnectedness of all living things.

Acknowledging and learning from the contributions made by Indigenous cultures, which are intercultural, involve interactions and linkages between multiple knowledge systems that are held safe in the commons, not privatized or commodified for sale and adapted to each historical, social and environmental context.

Sparking new narratives and stories - that:

• • Move away from the ideology of growth and materialist reductionism.

  • Challenge the idea that the South must adopt the lifestyles and culture of the industrialised nations, and move away from hegemonic Eurocentric Modernity.

  • Are a source of strength, hope and inspiration where we learn from each other and honour cooperation rather than competitiveness as the norm.

  • Promote quality of life that is not simply the accumulation of material goods, but must be expanded to include cultural, spiritual and other dimensions.

  • Encourage other patterns of production and consumption that put reduction at the core of polluting and extractivist industries and behaviours and promote distributed ownership, local, sustainable, more long lasting goods and products with a better balance between energy and materials, intensifying re-use and repair, promoting shared use, etc. (Slow and Circular Economy).

Contributing to connection between movements that are fighting for social, environmental and economic justice such as:
The women’s, labour, land reform, small scale farmers, homeless, poor people’s, Indigenous, and environmental movements and empower them to take action and experiment with collaborative initiatives that are about recognizing the diversity of people’s views on planetary wellbeing and their skills in protecting it.

Pluralist ‘post-development’ and post-extractive alternatives based on a diversity of ways of living and developing replace the one-sided Western paradigm of extractivist development and spark a transition to a permanent or sustainable economy based on renewable energy and materials facilitated by quotas and taxes on raw materials exports.

Brazilian struggles against deforestation in Amazonia, from the time of Chico Mendes in the 1980s, gave a different meaning to the term extractivist reserves. They were used in a positive sense (Burke 2012). Seeing that the conversion of forests into pastures for cattle increased so-called "production" (because something that was outside the market was brought into the market), the rubber tappers (seringueiros, with anthropologist Mary Aleggretti) invented the new term, “extractivist reserves”, that acquired a legal meaning after Chico Mendes' assassination in Acre in December 1988. They denoted areas maintaining the standing forest, where the latex from the rubber trees and the harvested Brazil nuts (castanha do Pará) would be taken by local inhabitants for sale, and where small scale agriculture, fishing and hunting could be practiced for subsistence while other fruits and medicinal plants could be harvested sustainably. A few years later, the fact that the forests fulfilled other ecological functions (water recycling, carbon absorption) became common knowledge and gave further evidence to support so-called extractivist reserves demarcated by law. Unfortunately, this policy has not stopped the deforestation of Amazonia. Many people who try to keep the forests intact have been killed. In a repeat of the Xapurí assassination of Chico Mendes, in 2011 two known activists defending an "extractive reserve" in Pará (José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo) were killed near their home in Nova Ipixuna, fifty kilometers from Marabá. Note the two (and opposite) meanings of extractivism. Some of the big mining and hydroelectric investments in Brazil under presidents Lula and Rousseff (such as the Belo Monte dam) epitomize Latin American extractivism, threatening some of the so-called extractivist reserves (in the Brazilian sense of the term).

Use this moment of disruption to:

SHIFT MINDSETS
Create a new normal, change cultural practices and promote values and norms that reward sustainable lifestyles and decision making and penalise destructive behaviour.

A new mindset will not arise from one day to the next, but will instead be the result of a long process of construction and reconstruction. We will need to start debunking certain myths such as profit, progress, development and globalization, and redefining concepts like prosperity, wellbeing, success, citizenship, while triggering radical changes, whether based on existing experiences or on other options in the search for new worlds. Government policy and structural change will be important too, yet where the community and not the state is the fundamental driver, a cultural and mindset shift will be a priority.

Support cultural and knowledge plurality and diversity
Knowledge, including its generation, use and transmission, is in the public domain or commons; innovation is democratically generated and there are no ivory towers of ‘expertise’; learning takes place as part of life and living rather than only in specialized institutions, and individual or collective pathways of ethical and spiritual well-being and of happiness are available to all.

FROM: A one-world universal view
TO: A multiplicity of possible worlds that recognize the diversity of people’s views on planetary wellbeing and their skills in protecting it.

FROM: ‘Development as progress’
TO: A vision of the world that puts ecological and social balance at its core and where cultural alternatives are nurtured and respect life on Earth. Societies are anchored in equality and equities (in the plural) and economies are based on inclusion, justice, diversity and driven by solidarity and reciprocity.

FROM: TINA - There Is No Alternative (to growth)
TO: TAMPA - There Are Many Possible Alternatives

FROM: Fortress and globalism narratives
TO: Solidarity narratives

FROM: Anthropocentrism consciousness
TO: Biocentrism consciousness

FROM: Individualistic view of wellbeing (money, material goods, personal health, moving up the social hierarchy)
TO: Collective wellbeing with community at the core and connected to nature and spirit (“being well”)

SHIFT POWER
Unsettle power dynamics and force the political and economic elites to change to eventually redistributing power from the few to the many

• Adopt direct or radical political democracy - where decision-making power originates in the smallest unit of human settlement, rural or urban, in which every human has the right, capacity, and opportunity to take part; building outwards from these basic units to larger levels of governance that are downwardly accountable; where political decision-making takes place respecting ecological and cultural linkages and boundaries.

• Encourage greater cooperation and connection across larger landscapes and ecosystems and between national as well as locally devolved democratic bodies, irrespective of local or national political boundaries and for the protection of ecosystems, livelihoods and markets, and whatever welfare measures may still be necessary.

SPARK STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND CREATE ENVIRONMENTAL BOUNDARIES

• Push for public policies focused on the satisfaction of basic needs for all and socio-ecological balance rather than the growth of GDP. (See Beyond GDP)

• Recognise and support in constitutions, regulations and treaties the need for pluralist ‘post-development’ models based on a diversity of ways of living and developing, where some activities will have to grow in a post-growth society (e.g. cooperatives, gardens, community-based organizations) while others will have to decline (e.g. polluting firms, extractivism, the advertising industry).

• Challenge current political boundaries including those of nation-states, where the role of the state eventually becomes minimal to enable functions such as connecting across larger landscapes, and whatever welfare measures may still be necessary.